Pictures of jungles in Papua New Guinea flash on the screen, along with scenes of cholera clinics and native people suffering from disfiguring diseases, body parts swollen beyond recognition. The talk shifts to rabies.

“If you get bitten up here, you can almost kiss yourself goodbye because it’s so close to the brain,” says instructor Dr. Tom Hoggard, pointing to his neck.

The students in the “Professionals’ Training in Global Health” class are mostly mid- to late-career professionals, dressed casually in jeans, go-coffee cups at hand. Hoggard asks if anyone has had the yellow fever vaccine, and a guy dressed in a gray suit and tie raises his hand.

“The first time I did, I lost 30 pounds and was sick for six months and woke up three times a night to change the sheets,” the student says.

It’s not just the first-hand medical experience and more formal attire that distinguishes this student. It’s also that he’s OHSU’s president, Dr. Joseph E. Robertson.

No one on the Marquam Hill campus has a more diverse job description than Robertson, an eye surgeon by training. He oversees nearly 14,000 employees and a $2 billion budget for a vast organization that treats the sick, teaches future doctors and performs world-renowned research.

For someone of his stature, he’s strikingly unassuming and approachable.

He is variously a doctor, a chief executive, a shaper of state health policy, an academic, a fundraiser, an ambassador and a cheerleader. Since Robertson took the helm of OHSU seven years ago, growth has taken place in every aspect of the university:

• OHSU has raised $275 million in gifts, but will blow that away if it can meet the Knight Cancer Challenge. OHSU’s Knight Cancer Institute must raise $500 million to receive another $500 million from Nike founder Phil Knight and his wife, Penny.

• It expanded its connections to rural areas of Oregon with a 14-hospital telemedicine network.

• Its annual operating budget has almost doubled, to $2.06 billion. The numbers of patients, students, degrees, employees and building space have also increased.

• Next spring, the university will open the Collaborative Life Sciences Building on the South Waterfront to house state-of-the-art research and teaching space.

• The Knight Cancer Institute’s director, Dr. Brian Druker, won the Lasker Award, the most prestigious medical research honor in the U.S., for his role in developing cancer-fighting drug Gleevec.

Robertson has also served on the nine-member Oregon Health Policy Board since it was created four years ago and helped shape the transformation of Medicaid delivery in the state with the creation of 16 Coordinated Care Organizations.

For those and other achievements OHSU has accomplished during his tenure, Robertson is the Portland Business Journal’s 2013 CEO of the year.

“He’s a terrific strategic thinker and has an ability to get people to follow,” said Dr. Peter Kohler, Robertson’s predecessor, who served as OHSU president from 1988 to 2006. “He’s done a superb job of moving the institution ahead through the recession.”

Devoted to OHSU

Robertson has never applied for a job outside of OHSU since he arrived there in 1979 to do his residency in ophthalmology. He never set out to be an administrator, let alone the president.

He wanted to be a doctor.

“I could have been happy doing other things in ophthalmology,” he says. “My career happened to unfold in the way opportunities became available at just the right times.”

Robertson’s interest in management really took off after he completed the executive MBA program at the University of Oregon in 1997.

“Science is about the pursuit of truth, a single answer,” he said. “Business is about getting things done and multiple answers and searching for the best answer. I found not only room, but also a need, for more creativity in business culture than I imagined.”

When Robertson was asked to be dean of the OHSU School of Medicine in 2003, his initial reaction was “no.” Despite his reluctance, he served as dean until he was named OHSU president in 2006.

Robertson is now keenly focused on the $1 billion Knight Cancer Challenge, which occupies up to 25 percent of his time.

OHSU will ask the state Legislature early next year for $200 million in bonding capacity to count toward the challenge.

Under the plan, the university would construct two new buildings at South Waterfront, one to house a research center to be located next to the Collaborative Life Science Building that is currently under construction, and a second where clinical trials and other services would be housed next to the Center for Health & Healing.

The $1 billion Knight Challenge will go down as one of the largest philanthropic gifts to a university, or perhaps the biggest, if it succeeds.

“When the book on cancer is written, the tagline should say, ‘Cancer was cured in Oregon,’” Robertson says. “It puts us in the position to be the premier cancer research institution in the country. It’s transformational for philanthropy, a reset. This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

The impact extends far beyond the campus and beyond cancer research. The $1 billion could mean more than twice that much for the Portland economy and beyond. OHSU’s impact on the state economy is already estimated at $3.9 billion a year.

“Joe is really the intellectual mind who can say, ‘what if?,’” said Lillian Shirley, who served with Robertson on the Oregon Health Policy Board and the Tri-County Medicaid Collaborative, which formed Health Share of Oregon, Portland’s largest ordinated Care Organization.

Seeking respect

In spite of the progress, OHSU doesn’t necessarily have the clout locally or nationally that many on the hill believe it deserves, including Robertson. Seldom is it mentioned in the same breath as the Johns Hopkins and Mayo clinics of the world.

That is slowly changing, but Robertson admits it can be frustrating.

“I think OHSU’s accomplishments are not as well known as they should be,” he says. “We are relatively disadvantaged being in a more remote part of the country.”

Yet OHSU isn’t exactly a secret.

U.S. News & World Report ranked five OHSU specialty areas as among the top 50 in its 2013 ratings. OHSU Hospital was also ranked as the top hospital in Oregon. In addition, the magazine recognized OHSU’s Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

OHSU staffers often lament that the institution is less appreciated in its own backyard — especially among the business community — than it is nationally. Several years ago, OHSU created a new position in its communications department to increase earned, or free, media.

Robertson spends a lot of time outside of his office. He visits parts of the state where OHSU has a presence, which is basically everywhere, to check in with donors, practitioners and politicians.

Robertson still practices as a physician, though he last performed eye surgery seven years ago, before he became president. He still interprets up to 50 eye ultrasounds a week and visits his office at OHSU’s Casey Eye Institute, where he used to be director.

He also continues to take courses such as the global health class because he needs continuing medical education. He believes it helps him as a top-level administrator.

“I have a better understanding of the situations that individuals will face,” says Robertson.

That evening, Robertson is back in an OHSU classroom on the South Waterfront, this time as a teacher, not a student. He is the guest speaker in Dr. David Baldridge’s Oregon State University MBA course on leadership and management.

Robertson shares anecdotes and then takes questions. He is equally comfortable discussing medicine or leadership.

As a leader, he says he is “offended by micromanagement,” something he seems to have rid from his own life.

“I’ve given up on separating professional time from personal time,” Robertson says. “Being the president of a university is a life you choose to live.”

Fast fact

Robertson graduated from Yale University, got his MD from Indiana University and came to OHSU in 1979 for an ophthalm-ology residency and fellowships in retina and vitreous disease and surgery at OHSU and Legacy Devers Eye Institute.